but the stars were burning out
by Arrowsbane
Summary: "She was a girl made of shattered stars/but the stars were burning out/and he was the night/left blank and bare." - danwilds dot tumblr dot com. Thoughts on how Hisana and Byakuya came to be, and then fell apart. They were something sad, and beautiful, and tragic. A red string does not always guarantee a happy ending. [For Coolio101]


**but the stars were burning out**

 **Arrowsbane**

' _She was a girl made of shattered stars,'_

…

Hisana is not a good person.

Maybe she could be great one day, but she will never call herself good.

She is ten years old when she dies, her baby sister held close. She is ten years old when she first sets eyes on the seventy-eighth district of the rukongai, Rukia clutched to her chest.

She is fifteen years old when she loses all hope, and leaves her sister behind in the empty vacant streets.

She is nineteen when she begins to claw for something _more_ than just existing.

She is thirty-something when she begins to succeed.

But she had been sixteen-and-a-day when she swore that one day she would find her baby sister and apologize.

…

' _with fire in her veins;'_

…

She fights and claws her way out of the lesser districts, determined to do more than just survive.

She learns to step on people to get where she wants to go, and not apologize.

She learns to be cunning. Learns to be clever.

She tames people to her will, and scatters her little birds throughout the rukongai.

And when she has done all this, then she has to learn how to be kind again.

Somewhere along the way, she had forgotten how to be kind. But she did not forget her promise.

Her ears are open for whispers of her sister, but the whispers do not come, no matter how far her little birds fly.

…

' _She shined brighter,'_

…

She shines brightly.

But it is a cold light, masked carefully and hidden away.

It's not the sort of brightness fueled by kindness, but a steely sense of determination that refuses to burn out and fade away.

It's the kind of brightness that creates the shadows you so carefully avoid.

In this, brightness is a polite term for noticeable.

And oh, she is noticed.

…

' _than anyone could.'_

…

It takes a special kind of person to build from the ground up without involving the yakuza.

There's just something about her; it echoes in the air around her, and there is something underlying in her firm gaze. Calm, but unyielding.

Girls like her have lightning in their souls and chaos in their bones.

…

…

' _He was a lost boy with hollow eyes,'_

…

For all that he knows his place in the world – future head of the Kuchki, future Captain of the Sixth, future warrior and master, soldier and father – Byakuya is lost.

He's been lost since his parents died.

Lost because while his future seems to be set in stone, his life written out for him by the clan, he doesn't know what it means to be _just Byakuya_.

Like the lights are on, but this house is not a home.

…

' _He was the night;'_

…

He is calm, and he is careful. He is also poised, regal, charming and deviously dangerous.

He passes through his training with a single-minded determination, determination to succeed.

He is driven – more so than the freezing snow, or lashing sandstorm.

This alienates him from his peers. Where they joke and laugh, and pace themselves, he breezes on ahead, so eager to leave the last remnants of his childhood (even when he is an adult already) in the past.

He blends into the shadows, quiet and unseen, yet always waiting, always there, eyes and ears open to the world.

…

' _Dark,'_

…

It's a lonely existence, being set apart from the crowd.

But he cannot afford to hand out his affection like leaves on the breeze; not when every smiling face seeking favour could be hiding a knife in the dark.

The Academy days' pass by in the blink of an eye, and he begins the long climb to the top; heading the words that his Grandfather told him so long ago.

…

' _but filled with stars.'_

…

It is not completely without it's perks.

There are bright patches here and there; if he is careful to edge his way around the twisting rotten roots of old-world politics.

And then, one day, the brightest star of all practically falls right into his lap.

…

…

' _They were bare legs,'_

…

How they met did not matter.

How they fell in love cannot be explained.

Two such very different people, but perhaps she set his soul alight? Perhaps she blazed bright enough for the both of them? It had to have been something special for worlds like theirs to collide.

Or perhaps it was something as ordinary as can be.

We are all stories in our own right. Unprinted, unbound; just wild words dancing on the winds of time. Theirs was not written down, and so we will never know.

But it was special. Because it was _theirs._

…

' _entangled in dirty bedsheets;'_

…

It was not proper for a noble to marry a commoner. Not proper for a man with such standing as Byakuya to turn away every eligible young lady in the seireitei and set his cap at a girl like Hisana. But he did it anyway, saw something in her that nobody else could see.

Anybody with a brain should have seen this coming, for all his icy exterior, he was (grudging) friends with the Shihouin empress – the flash goddess Yoruichi. For all his cold stares and frigid words, his zanpakuto was a shimmering example of beauty bound up in a deadly dance. For all his birth and breeding, he had the heart of a poet and the soul of a romantic.

How could he not defy all, and shatter the rules for a girl like Hisana.

…

 _(they chose each other.)_

…

He chose her, and she chose him.

Was that all that should be needed, for them to be husband and wife?

One might think so.

A red string might have bound their fates together, a blessing from the Gods.

But the Gods have no power over free will, or self-destruction.

And even fate, embroidered with delicate red, cannot guarantee a happy ending.

…

…

' _She was a girl made of shattered stars,'_

…

Hisana is bright and alive. She refuses to be stagnant like the noble clans, who can wait patiently, play out games of politics while the universe passed them by.

She is vibrant in her own way, incapable of sitting still.

There is a gentleness to her, one that was learnt, it did not come to her naturally.

Or perhaps it had once, before life had taken that from her?

There is a titanium spine, and an iron will hidden beneath her smile too.

She burns so fiercely, and searches relentlessly. She never says what for. But she is a girl a woman on a mission.

[He worries sometimes, that she will work too hard and burn herself out.

He did not think it would be so literal though.]

…

' _but the stars were burning out;'_

…

It starts with an extra hour in bed every morning. Before she had been up with the sun, but she was tired these days. Long nights, longer days. Desperate longing, the confusion and grief and self-hate that had taken root in her soul was destroying her.

Souls are delicate things; tough and resilient and near impossible to truly break, but delicate all the same. They were not designed to be at war with themselves.

And Hisana is fighting a losing battle.

…

' _And he was the night,'_

…

His love is not enough to save her, and _oh_ how that burned. How that stung.

Why was it not enough?

[ _"I'm sorry for being so dependent on you even in the end."_ She says, and he wants to protest. She has never been a burden; her illness is not something she can help. The illness saps her spark away, leaving an echo of the woman he loves.

" _I'm sorry for not being able... to return the love that you've given me whole-heartedly."_ She tells him, and he wants to protest. He's seen the love she shows.

It's in the soft smile she gives him in the mornings, it's in the movement of her arm when she pours tea for him on a winter's night. It's in the sound of her footsteps as she approaches him with a blanket when he's been up late working on paperwork.

" _The five years in which I spent with you... were like a dream... Byakuya-sama..."_

' _Don't leave me,'_ he wants to beg.]

Why couldn't she have asked for help? He would have done anything she could have asked.

But she did not ask, not until she breathed her last breath. A whispered plea, as the tiny spark inside her flickered in the wind, and then could not last any longer.

And then he was alone.

…

' _left blank and bare…'_

…

What was the point in anything, when Hisana's body dissolves into reishi? Because for all that he had loved her, really and deeply truly loved her with a fire he had not thought to possess; she could not allow herself to return that love. Had thought she did not deserve something like that.

What a silly woman she had been.

 _Had._ The thought chokes the breath in his throat.

Everybody deserves to be loved, at least once in their lives.

And so, decades later, he walks through the halls of the Academy on an errand and passes by a girl who looks so much like his beloved.

If he were an ordinary man, perhaps, he might have been a storm of thoughts and emotions – all coming together like lightning and thunder and waves twisted into a tempest and locked away in an ornamental tea pot.

But Byakuya is a law unto himself, and he soldiers on with a relentlessness bordering on dangerous.

And then the next morning, he sets out to adopt his beloved's little sister for his own.

Rukia – Rukia who dances through her zanjutsu kata with a serene grace, Rukia who was raised in the rukongai as a peasant – becomes a Kuchiki, and Byakuya wonders if Hisana would have been happy.

…

…

[Unseen by mortal eyes, the red string wrapped about his wrist does not flutter listlessly, but waits patiently, as strong and bright as ever, for his soul to collide with hers once more.

 _Silly Shinigami,_ Fate sighs. _Whoever said that death was the end?_

It is not. They will meet again, will write their own destiny once more.

Maybe they will learn from their mistakes. Maybe then, they will get it right.]

* * *

 **In response to the Guest Review "** **And when they get it right, they still die, right? Ad infinitum?", I suppose all I really have to say is that everybody dies, but not everybody really _lives_. And that Death is never the end, not really.**

 **For the second Guest review (and I have no idea if both Guests are the same person or not?) of ":Is it possible that i like your story a lot then at the end i like your end comment even morr?" I honestly have no idea. :3 But if that's how you feel (is it egotistical of me to assume you do?), then one would assume that yes, it's possible. XD**

 **For any questions, concerns, or if you just want to scream at/with me, feel free to scurry on down to my weird little hole in the wall at www dot arrowsbane dot tumblr dot com**


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